Man of the year, or scandal of the decade?
Now Vladimir Putin is Time’s “Person of the Year” for 2007: not an honour, the magazine insists, but just a recognition of “bold, earth-changing leadership”. Even so, that is hardly future-proof. Russia’s still-shaky economy and disastrous demographics mean that rather than being the harbinger of Russia’s stability-based [...]

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China’s economic development strategy has often been called a new version of mercantilism, the philosophy of political economy that built the great nation-states and empires of Europe in the 16th-19th centuries. Mercantilist features have been most prominent in Beijing’s drive for exports and a large reserve of hard currency. The focus has usually [...]

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The power of Zarah Ghahramani’s chilling memoir, “My Life as a Traitor,” is in the discovery - hers and ours - that in Iran such routine student activism can have devastating consequences. In riveting prose, she and her co-author, journalist Robert Hillman, tell the story of how Ghahramani was plucked from the street after [...]

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It can be said that the United States decided against developing a mobile Midgetman strategic missile, concentrating instead on the survivability of its ground-based nuclear systems by hardening their silos as part of the Minuteman-3 modernization program. Now let us have a look at multiple warheads, their range and accuracy. A host of information [...]

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An Egyptian official cited by Israel’s Ynet news portal on Monday warned that if Jerusalem does not mind its own business regarding the smuggling of terrorist arms into the Gaza Strip via the Egyptian Sinai, then Cairo will use its diplomatic clout in Africa to damage Israeli interests.
The official spoke to Ynet less than a [...]

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Neglect of USAF
“The Air Force effectively [is] the redheaded stepchild [in the budget], just like the Navy is, in the Pentagon. They’re just being completely constricted in their capabilities in order [to permit DOD officials] to deal with what you have to do for [Army and Marine Corps] ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. … [...]

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India, Israel sign intel-sharing, missile-production deals.
India and Israel have signed deals on intelligence-sharing and joint production of the Python quick-reaction missile, the Press Trust of India reports.
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Booming defense ties between India and Israel touched $7 billion last year. Israel is now India’s No. 2 defense supplier. Russia is No. 1.
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2007 was a year when major industrial nations divided into tortoises and hares in their policies towards ballistic missile defense.
The United States led the hares, with a banner year in progress on its many BMD programs. With much less publicity but solid achievement, Russia quietly moved at the very least into second place. The first [...]

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According to the press-service of the French company Thales, it has made a contract with Rosoboronexport on supplying around 100 thermal vision cameras (Catherine FC model) to Russia for being set up on the Russian newest T-90 tanks.
Catherine FC cameras provide effective target recognition in various lighting conditions of day and night. The cameras were [...]

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BELGRADE, January 2 (Itar-Tass) - President Boris Tadic rules out a possibility of Serbia’s military interference in Kosovo.
“Serbia’s armed forces will act in compliance with domestic and international legislation,” Tadic said on Wednesday. He visited military facilities in the security area adjacent to the administrative border with Kosovo.
“We’ll never send our soldiers to senseless [...]

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Say goodbye to the year that brought a 65 percent run-up in the price of a barrel of oil and a Nobel Peace Prize to punctuate the message of the heralds of climate disaster. It was a year that moved Washington to enact the first increase in automobile fuel economy standards in 32 years and [...]

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As U.S. unilateralism has asserted the role of the United States as the sole global superpower, the rest of the world is exploring a variety of ways of pushing back. One is the creation of several new regional security consortiums which are independent of the U.S. One of the most important is the Shanghai Cooperation [...]

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Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo Thursday expressed his objection to the idea of joining the U.S.-led global missile defense network aimed at intercepting high-altitude ballistic missiles, citing financial problems.
“To participate (in the U.S. missile defense shield), we have to purchase state-of-the-art early warning `systems’ and missile interceptors that require a big budget,” Kim told a press [...]

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China calls N Korea nuclear declaration delay natural part of the …
International Herald Tribune, France - 3 hours ago
AP BEIJING: North Korea’s failure to declare information on all of its nuclear programs by the end of last year is a normal part of the process, China said …
China calls missed NKorea nuclear deadline ‘normal’ AFP
China says North [...]

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Russia has admitted that customs officials thwarted more than 120 attempts to smuggle “highly radioactive” material out of the country last year.
The disclosure is likely to fuel concern about how many illegal exports were not halted. It will also lead to new fears that Moscow has failed to stop material becoming available on the black [...]

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